Literary Terms

Literary Terms

This resource was developed by my colleague, Ross MacKay, for use in his first-year literature classes. I asked Ross if I could translate it to HTML and post it as an on-line resource - and here it is!

Allegory

A story illustrating an idea or a moral principle in which objects take on symbolic meanings. In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Dante, symbolizing humankind, is taken by Virgil the poet on a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise in order to teach him the nature of sin and its punishments, and the way to salvation.

Alliteration

Used for poetic effect, a repetition of the initial sounds of several words in a group. The following line from Robert Frost's poem Acquainted with the Night provides us with an example of alliteration:

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet.

The repetition of the 's' sound creates a sense of quiet, reinforcing the meaning of the line.

Allusion

A reference in one literary work to a character or theme found in another literary work. T. S. Eliot, in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock alludes (refers) to the biblical figure John the Baptist in the line,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter . . .

In the New Testament, John the Baptist's head was presented to King Herod on a platter.

Ambiguity

A statement which can contain two or more meanings. For example, when the oracle at Delphi told Croesus that if he waged war on Cyrus he would destroy a great empire, Croesus thought the oracle meant his enemy's empire. In fact, the empire Croesus destroyed by going to war was his own.

Analogy

The comparison of two things, which are alike in several respects, for the purpose of explaining or clarifying some unfamiliar or difficult idea or object by showing how the idea or object is similar to some familiar one. While simile and analogy often overlap, the simile is generally a more artistic likening, done briefly for effect and emphasis, while analogy serves the more practical purpose of explaining a thought process or a line of reasoning or the abstract in terms of the concrete, and may therefore be more extended:

You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has

made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.

--Samuel Johnson

Antagonist

A person or force which opposes the protagonist in a literary work. In Stephen Vincent Benet's The Devil and Daniel Webster, Mr. Scratch is Daniel Webster's antagonist at the trial of Jabez Stone. The cold, in Jack London's To Build a Fire is the antagonist which defeats the man on the trail. The antagonist may not be obvious, in which case you could choose a candidate and discuss why he or she deserves to be thought of as the antagonist. An antagonist may not even be a person - or may be the same person as the main character. (See also Protagonist.)

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work, especially in a poem. Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells" contains numerous examples:

Hear the mellow wedding bells . . . and From the molten-golden notes . . .

The repetition of the short 'e' and long 'o' sounds denotes a heavier, more serious bell than the bell encountered in the first stanza where the assonance included the 'i' sound in examples such as tinkle, sprinkle, and twinkle.

Bathos

Writing is bathetic when it strives to be serious (impassioned or elevated) but achieves only a comic effect because it is anti-climactic. "Anticlimax" is synonymous with bombast but can also refer to a bathetic effect which is intentional. In Tom Thumb the Great (1731), Fielding uses anticlimax for the purposes of satire, as when King Arthur observes the signs of love in his daughter: "Your eyes spit fire, your cheeks grow red as beef." Here figurative language that begins with an ennobling (though bombastic) fire metaphor then descends to the mean level of raw steak.

Blank Verse

A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Consider the following from The Ball Poem by John Berryman:

What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,

What, what is he to do? I saw it go

Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then

Merrily over-there it is in the water!

Carpe Diem

A Latin phrase which translated means "Seize (Catch) the day," meaning "Make the most of today." The phrase originated as the title of a poem by the Roman Horace (65-8 B.C.) and caught on as a theme with such English poets as Robert Herrick and Andrew Marvell. Consider these lines from Herrick's To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time:

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying:

And this same flower that smiles today,

To-morrow will be dying.

Character

Character. (1) Any of the persons involved in a story. (2) The distinguishing moral qualities and personal traits of a character. They may perform actions, speak to other characters, be described by the narrator, or be remembered (or even imagined) by other characters. Characters to notice in a story are the story's Narrator, the Main Character or Protagonist, the Antagonist, characters who are Parallel or Foils for each other, and sometimes Minor Characters.

Developing (or dynamic) character. A character who during the course of a story undergoes a permanent change in some aspect of his/her personality or outlook.

Flat character. A character who has only one outstanding trait or feature, or at the most a few distinguishing marks.

Round character. A character who is complex, multi-dimensional, and convincing.

Stock character. A stereotyped character: one whose nature is familiar from prototypes in previous fiction.

Static character. A character who is the same sort of person at the end of a story as s/he was at the beginning.

Characterization

The method a writer uses to reveal the personality of a character in a literary work. Personality may be revealed (1) by what the character says about himself or herself; (2) by what others reveal about the character; and (3) by the character's own actions.

Connotation and Denotation

The denotation of a word is its dictionary definition. The word 'wall', therefore, denotes an upright structure which encloses something or serves as a boundary. The connotation of a word is its emotional content. In this sense, the word 'wall' can also mean an attitude or actions which prevent becoming emotionally close to a person. In Robert Frost's Mending Wall, two neighbors walk a property line each on his own side of a wall of loose stones. As they walk, they pick up and replace stones that have fallen. Frost thinks it's unnecessary to replace the stones since they have no cows to damage each other's property. The neighbor only says, "Good fences make good neighbors." The wall, in this case, is both a boundary (denotation) and a barrier that prevents Frost and his neighbor from getting to know each other, a force prohibiting involvement (connotation).

Consonance

The repetition of consonant sounds with differing vowel sounds in words near each other in a line or lines of poetry. Consider the following example from Theodore Roethke's Night Journey"

We rush into a rain

That rattles double glass.

The repetition of the 'r' sound in 'rush', 'rain', and 'rattles', occurring so close to each other in these two lines, would be considered consonance.

Couplet

A stanza of two lines, usually rhyming. The following by Andrew Marvell is an example of a rhymed couplet:

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

Crisis or Climax

The moment or event in the Plot in which the conflict is most directly addressed: the main character "wins" or "loses"; the secret is revealed; the ending of the story becomes inevitable, etc. Example: In Cinderella, the climactic moment of the plot occurs when Cinderella fits her foot into the glass slipper, thereby "winning" marriage with the Prince. In many stories, there are several points in the plot which are plausible crises. This is especially true when there are several almost-equal major characters. Try finding the moment which you think is the most important and discussing why it deserves to be thought of as the crisis of the plot. Or you could also try explaining why this particular story seems to have no crisis (if that is how you see it).

Exposition

The first section of the typical Plot, in which Characters are introduced, the Setting is described, and any necessary background information is given. Example: Every fairy tale begins with expository information: "There once was a king and queen who wanted a child . . ." or "Once upon a time there lived a merchant with one daughter and two stepdaughters . . . " and so forth. The characters are described and sometimes named; their family relationships are specified. Think about how much information the story gives at the beginning. Sometimes there is a lot, and the exposition stretches out; sometimes the story starts in the middle (or, if you want to use an impressive Latin term, in medias res) and the expository information is tucked in unobtrusively as people talk to each other or inside the narrator's descriptions. What does this author do with the exposition and why did he or she make that choice?

Diction

An author's choice of words. Since words have specific meanings, and since one's choice of words can affect feelings, a writer's choice of words can have great impact in a literary work. The writer, therefore, must choose his words carefully. Discussing his novel A Farewell to Arms during an interview, Ernest Hemingway stated that he had to rewrite the ending thirty-nine times. When asked what the most difficult thing about finishing the novel was, Hemingway answered, "Getting the words right."

Falling Action

The part of the Plot after the Climax, containing events caused by the climax and contributing to the Resolution. Example: In most fairy tales, there is not much falling action: "So they were married and lived happily ever after" combines the falling action of the marriage and the resolution of everlasting happiness into one sentence. But in some versions of Snow White, the wicked queen comes to Snow White's marriage and is punished: the prince has ordered someone to make iron shoes, and they have been heated in an oven; the queen is forced to wear them to dance at the wedding feast, and so she dies. These events are falling action. Depending on where you place the story's crisis, there may not appear to be much falling action. What events are required to finish the conflict once and for all? Try to name the events of the falling action, or explain why the crisis and resolution do not require much (or any) falling action.

Figurative Language

In literature, a way of saying one thing and meaning something else. Take, for example, this line by Robert Burns, "My luv is a red, red rose." Clearly Mr. Burns does not really mean that he has fallen in love with a red, aromatic, many-petalled, long, thorny-stemmed plant. He means that his love is as sweet and as delicate as a rose. While figurative language provides a writer with the opportunity to write imaginatively, it also tests the imagination of the reader, forcing the reader to go below the surface of a literary work into deep, hidden meanings.

Figure of Speech

An example of figurative language that states something that is not literally true in order to create an effect. Similes, metaphors and personification are figures of speech which are based on comparisons. Metonymy, synecdoche, synesthesia, apostrophe, oxymoron, and hyperbole are other figures of speech.

Flashback

A reference to an event which took place prior to the beginning of a story or play. In Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilamanjaro," the protagonist, Harry Street, has been injured on a hunt in Africa. Dying, his mind becomes preoccupied with incidents in his past. In a flashback Street remembers one of his wartime comrades dying painfully on barbed wire on a battlefield in Spain.

Foil

A character in a play who sets off the main character or other characters by comparison. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet and Laertes are young men who behave very differently. While Hamlet delays in carrying out his mission to avenge the death of his father, Laertes is quick and bold in his challenge of the king over the death of his father. Much can be learned about each by comparing and contrasting the actions of the two. Finding character foils and explaining the contrasts between them is a standard type of assignment, though the term may not be used. "Compare and contrast X and Y" (with characters' names instead of "X" and "Y") usually means either "discuss why X and Y are character foils" or "discuss why X and Y are parallel characters."

Foreshadowing

A method used to build suspense by providing hints of what is to come.

Free Verse

Unrhymed Poetry with lines of varying lengths, and containing no specific metrical pattern. The poetry of Walt Whitman provides us with many examples. Consider the following lines from Song of Myself:

I celebrate myself and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loaf and invite my soul,

I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

Genre

A literary type or form. Drama is a genre of literature. Within drama, genres include tragedy, comedy and other forms.

Hyperbole

A figure of speech in which an overstatement or exaggeration occurs as in the following lines from Act 2, scene 2 of Shakespeare's Macbeth. In this scene, Macbeth has murdered King Duncan. Horrified at the blood on his hands, he asks: